THE FACT that the sensitive cortical layer has no protective barrier against excitations emanating from within will have one inevitable consequence: viz. that these transmissions of stimuli acquire increased economic significance and frequently give rise to economic disturbances comparable to the traumatic neuroses. The most prolific sources of such inner excitations are the so-called instincts of the organism, the representatives of all forces arising within the body and transmitted to the psychic apparatus - the most important and most obscure element in psychological research.
Perhaps we shall not find it too rash an assumption that the excitations proceeding from the instincts do not conform to the type of the ‘bound' but of the free-moving nerve processes that are striving for discharge. The most trustworthy knowledge we have of these processes comes from the study of dreams. There we found that the processes in the unconscious systems are fundamentally different from those in the (pre)conscious; that in the unconscious ‘charges' may easily be completely transferred, displaced or condensed, while if this happened with preconscious material only defective results would be obtained. This is the reason for the well-known peculiarities of the manifest dream, after the preconscious residues of the day before have undergone elaboration according to the laws of the unconscious. I termed this kind of process in the unconscious the psychic ‘primary process' in contradistinction to the secondary process valid in our normal waking life.
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